234 THE DIAMOND MINES OF SOUTH AFRICA
flooding
the lower levels in the rainy season, but never sufficient in quantity
to have been any considerable obstacle, if the mine had been equipped
with the ordinary pumping machinery erected in other mining districts.
The lack of any such machinery, compelling for years the bailing and
hoisting of the water in buckets or tubs by hand or horse power, was no
slight drawback to the progress of sinking. Hard upon this impediment
came the much graver trouble occasioned by the crumbling, cracking,
sliding, and falling of the encasing reef of decomposed basalt and
shale. The unstable walls of these soft rocks caved rapidly upon
exposure to air and moisture into the open pit, and the fracturing and
slipping were aggravated by the imprudent vertical cutting of the mine,
removing the entire body of blue ground without cutting away the reef
in comparatively stable terraces or slopes. Obviously no single
claim-holder would undertake the cost of removing the dangerous reef
for the common benefit, and it was difficult to secure the general
cooperation and subscriptions so urgently required for this work. What
is everybody's business in theory has too often been nobody's business
in practice. The mean and short-sighted
